This weekend music lovers and cannabis connoisseurs converge at the Cowichan Valley, BC for the Legend Valley Music Festival and Cannabis Bio Cup.
The concert offers attendees three days of music while also including a cannabis competition for growers.
Ashley Abraham owns the The Green Ceiling cannabis lounge in Victoria and, as part of the Great Canadian Canna Mall (the country’s first all-cannabis shopping centre), is sponsoring this year’s event.
“It’s not just a cannabis competition and it’s not just a music festival, it’s really blending the two together,” she said. “Music culture and cannabis culture vibe really well together.”
Abraham said the Bio Cup originally started in Spain, and this is the first year it’s moved to Canada.
“It’s a cannabis competition where they’re going to have all the finest concentrates, flowers, edibles, everything that a good competition brings to the table,” she said. “It really gives people the opportunity to showcase the effort and handwork that they’ve been putting in to their livelihoods and their craft.”
Abraham said smaller scale craft cannabis allows growers to put more time and effort into a phenomenal product.
“With competitions like this it allows a greater range of people to sample those products and see what’s going on,” she said. “It really gives a greater amount of recognition to the people who are behind the scenes putting the work into the plants, which is of course, the growers.”
Abraham said times are quickly changing in the country and, as cannabis is legalized, it’s important that all sectors of the industry are able to survive.
“The craft industry is really the one that we need to support, because it’s really always been the craft markets that have had to fight tooth and nail to keep their market,” she said.
Abraham said, while she doesn’t like using it as an example, alcohol serves as a model where there are larger, mainstream companies, like the Budweiser or Molson, but also a craft niche of microbreweries that produce really amazing products.
“What it comes down to is really consumer choice,” she said. “By having a wide variety of products available it really allows the consumer to choose the option that really works best for them and their lifestyle and their accessibility.
“I don’t ever see myself buying mainstream, commercial cannabis, Im a craft consumer so I always like to have the option of craft cannabis and I don’t see ever buying from the Molson or the Budweiser of weed, but, maybe for some people that’s what they need.”
Events like the Bio Cup are important, Abraham said, to showcase the craft cannabis industry in a positive light to allow the industry to grow in the mainstream.
“Aside from the fact that it’s a three-day line-up of some stellar bands, it’s the first time in my life that I can think of having a mainstream music event that is coinciding with a cannabis event,” Abraham said. “If we can go out and support it and show that there is an interest in events like this then the chance of more events happening is increased.”
Cannabis Life Network will broadcast, live from the event.
You can also watch Abraham in the attached video, skydiving with Panda from Skunk & Panda Shatter Shack.
“We wanted to get out and have a good time and just kind of be adventurous and showcase getting really high, in other ways,” she said.